Motivated by controversies surrounding the continued employment of poverty porn in humanitarian business, we initiated two 2x2x2 experiments to examine the extent to which humanitarian ads that utilise poverty porn images weaponize fundraising. Informed by negative state relief and affect intensity theory, the two investigations explored the effects on study participants of the inclusion within ad appeals of images of starving children, ad spokespeople of disparate gender and ethnicity, and different types of message frame. A two (protest emotive vs. informative message) × two (male vs. female announcer) × two (white British or black African ethnicity) between-subjects eye track experiment (n = 236) revealed that an informative message with a white female announcer attracted the most attention. Next, a survey (n = 667) was completed which recorded participants’ levels of affect intensity, advertising scepticism, and donation intention. The results suggested that a white British female announcer was more likely to engage potential donors than a male and/or non-white spokesperson. The implications of the findings are discussed in light of how poverty porn might work in practice
